Twitter Adds Warning Sign for ‘Suspicious Accounts’

In its ongoing battle to make its app less of a breeding ground for internet trolls, Twitter will start adding warnings to “suspicious accounts,” the company announced on Tuesday.

What Twitter means by “suspicious” is a bit vague, judging from its blog post. Users showing “spammy” behavior — following accounts in “coordinated, bulk ways” — will be put in a read-only state, where they can’t tweet at other users. These accounts will be purged from the follower count of users they’re following, until they’ve been verified by Twitter. Accounts acting “suspiciously” will also be tagged with a warning label, and prevent new accounts from following them until they’ve been verified.

Twitter announced several other measures the company is taking to curb trolling. It started auditing existing accounts to make sure they pass “simple, automatic security checks”; the audits have been weeding out 50,000 spam accounts per day, according to Twitter. New accounts will also be confirmed either by email or phone number. The company is also leveraging more machine learning tools to proactively flag “problematic accounts,” rather than wait for users to report them. The tools have helped Twitter identify 9.9 million spam or automated accounts each week in May — up from 3.2 million last September.

The San Francisco-based company has seen a dramatic turnaround from a business-standpoint, with its share price more than doubling in the last year. But it also grappled with its inability to stop Russian trolls from spreading misinformation during the 2016 U.S. election, as well as criticism it capriciously enforces its user guidelines. At the same time, Twitter has rolled out several new measures to promote the “health of public conversation” on the app, as CEO Jack Dorsey put it.

“We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and increasingly divisive echo chambers,” tweeted Dorsey in March. “We aren’t proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough.”

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released more than 3,500 advertisements and posts spread by Russian trolls before and after the 2016 U.S. election. Below is a look at 10 of the most shocking examples that stood out from Congress's reveal.

House Intelligence Committee

Many posts pushed the narrative that Hillary Clinton would confiscate guns if she were elected President.

House Intelligence Committee

This graphic meme painted cops as KKK members attacking a young black child.

House Intelligence Committee

Only "sissies" and other undesirables wouldn't support Donald Trump, many of the memes said.

House Intelligence Committee

President Obama was a "pawn" and "traitor" in the hands of "Arabian Sheikhs," said one 2016 ad.

Russian trolls also used Instagram to spread sponsored political memes.

House Intelligence Committee

The "Blacktivist" page routinely shared memes on Colin Kaepernick and other football players kneeling during the national anthem.

House Intelligence Committee

"Heart of Texas" routinely posted on "Killary Rotten Clinton," and threatened to secede from the union if she won the election.

House Intelligence Committee

The "Being Patriotic" page labeled ex-cons as "Obama voters."

House Intelligence Committee

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Congress just released 3,500 posts touching on a myriad of topics

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released more than 3,500 advertisements and posts spread by Russian trolls before and after the 2016 U.S. election. Below is a look at 10 of the most shocking examples that stood out from Congress's reveal.